At the premiere of Admission, which stars Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Lily Tomlin, and Wallace Shawn, director Paul Weitz introduced the movie with a few words about Fey’s and Rudd’s demeanors (and demands) around the set:

I was asked what it was like making this movie with this wonderful cast. It was a lot of fun, and all I can say is that the cast’s reputation as not only being marvelous actors but also great to work with held true. Every morning Tina Fey would ride in on her Harley Davidson and suck down a six-pack of beer. Then she would kick over the craft-services table, just for fun. “You have one hour with me,” she would say. “That includes lighting and lunch, so you’d better get cracking. And I don’t want any notes,” she would tell me. “Just tell me what my character’s name is.”

As is his custom, Paul Rudd demanded that his salary be paid in unmarked one-dollar bills. Every day Paul would sit in his trailer, refusing to emerge until he had counted his day’s salary. Eventually I would send Lily Tomlin and Wally Shawn down to Paul’s trailer with a bag of Hershey Kisses to try to induce him to come to the set. “Not unless he leaves,” Paul would growl. “There’s not room enough for more than one Paul on this set.” “Just ignore the director,” Lily and Wally would tell him. “That’s what we do.”

The atmosphere on the set was one of screaming and dread. Our younger actors learned some invaluable terminology, such as: “I don’t do off-camera,” and “I gave it to you on the first take,” and “Talk to my agent.”

[Pause] O.K., sadly, none of that is true. It was a great experience directing the film!

At a post-screening party at Monkey Bar, Weitz explained his motivation for the comedy routine. “Everybody knows that they’re such lovely people, so I thought it would be funny to talk about them being awful,” he told VF Daily. He did write the bit. “I kind of like to wander into the lion’s den. It’s pretty stupid to do a comedic intro with Tina Fey and Paul Rudd there, but I thought I’d give it a whack,” he added. “Fools dive in where angels fear to tread.”

Paul Weitz., By JIMI CELESTE/patrickmcmullan.com.

In the movie, Fey plays a harried Princeton University admissions officer, and she says the foibles of that type of job are not completely unfamiliar. “I feel like having worked at S.N.L. as one of the head writers was almost like being an admissions officer for S.N.L., because I had to read hundreds of submissions, and you had the same thing, where it’s everyone’s dream job, and you feel like you’re one of the gatekeepers of it, and it’s a lot of pressure,” Fey told VF Daily. “I don’t think I could do it at Princeton, but maybe a lower-level school,” she added.

Fey also had to decide who made the cut at her series 30 Rock, which just ended after seven seasons. “You just do the best you can,” she said of handling that delicate situation. “Really pay attention to everyone, and you really respect the process, kind of like in this movie, where it’s like you don’t half-ass it; you try to remember how much everyone cared about getting the job.”

Shawn, who plays her boss, told VF Daily that he didn’t get to keep a memento from recently wrapped series Gossip Girl, on which he had a recurring role—but not for lack of trying. “I begged to buy my clothes, but they didn’t go for it,” he said. “Oh, I wore the most wonderful clothes. [They] belong to Warner Bros., I think, and some other short actor will be shortly appearing in them.”

Tomlin, who plays Fey’s radical-feminist mother, admits she would have a hard time judging people as school-admissions officers do. “I can’t even go on Ru Paul’s Drag Race and criticize the drag queens!” Tomlin said. “I can’t! They’re so heartfelt, and so sweet, and they’ve worked so damn hard, and everybody around me is saying, ‘Well look, sister, you’re, like, skank!’ I just said, ‘Stop it!’ I hated it.”

Tomlin missed most of Weitz’s comedic introduction, thanks to cast photo ops, but told us she was thrilled when she found out that the director’s mother is actress Susan Kohner. “When I was a teenager, my mother and I went to see Imitation of Life, in which Susan Kohner is one of the stars,” Tomlin said, adding that the movie is a real tearjerker.

“I mean, it’s, like, people audibly sobbing in the theater. So when we sat down to see the movie, my mother opened her purse, and she had three washcloths inside,” she said, laughing. “And my whole life, I mean, that was so imprinted on my mind—I thought it was so funny and so great. And finally I had someone to tell it to. When I met Paul, he said his mother was Susan Kohner, and then I got to meet Susan, and I got to tell her!”